Let healthcare 'shoppers' decide

Critics of consumer-driven healthcare worry that cost considerations will prompt patients to forgo care ("High deductibles make low-cost plans risky," June 3). They believe patients should be insulated from cost. But not knowing about the cost doesn't make it free.

Increasingly, someone will have to decide between healthcare and other uses for our money. If not consumers, it will be insurers, employers or government. What we are facing is a choice: Continue to fumble blindly toward socialized medicine, which would have a severely negative effect on the economy, or let the "shoppers" in healthcare control their funds and their choices.